This vicious little guy is a Malifaux Raptor to further expand Marcus’ Marvelous Menagerie. For just a 3 soulstone model, I find having a Raptor in most of my Marcus crews remarkably handy–I tend to use them to attack my own models to give them a condition turning them permanently into beasts, which makes for some fun interactions with Marcus and Myranda (Joss and a Gunsmith tend to make their way into most of my Marcus crews for that reason).

Since Wyrd Miniatures hasn’t released Malifaux Raptors and I wanted to be able run at least one of these guys in official “Gaining Grounds” tournaments, I needed to convert another Wyrd model into a Malifaux Raptor; one of the guys in my local area mentioned that it would be fun if I took a Guild Austringer (which, if you’re not familiar with Malifaux, are basically falconers for the Guild) and have the bird attacking him instead of landing on his hand. Clearly I loved that idea as that’s exactly what I did. I took some inspiration from one of my favorite Malifaux models, the Wendigo model, to make a dynamic model.

I had a great time building and painting this guy. In the original model the Guild Austringer has his left hand in a fist, so I had to sculpt him an open hand as I thought it would look better open as he was being knocked backwards. For the gore being ripped from his face, I glued some fine fishing monofilament in place using gloss varnish and then coated it with GW Blood for the Blood God once it was firmly attached. The base is a Rocky Bluff resin base from Secret Weapon Miniatures. I created the icicles using a method I demonstrated previously in an ice basing hobby tutorial. Definitely a lot more work that I would normally put into a 3 soulstone model, but a model I tend to bring it in a lot of my crews and it was such a fun idea that I just had to do it. I hope you like this model as much as I do!

Check back on Wednesday for a glimpse at the future on Work in Progress Wednesday!!